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When your Company Name is Your Top Keyword

Everyone wants certain keywords to put their Website among the top 10 search results on Google, Bing or Baidu. The baker wants his Web site to show up every time someone search for “tarts”, the travel agency wants their site to show up every time someone search for “Jamaica” and so on. The fact is, sometimes your company name is the number one keyword driving traffic to your Website. Does this mean your keyword strategy is a failure? Absolutely not.

If your company or organization name is among the top keywords sending traffic to your Web site it doesn’t mean people are coming to your Web site for the wrong reasons – it means they are coming! Continue reading “When your Company Name is Your Top Keyword”

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How Much Time Should Visitors Spend on Your Website?

Picture 3Recently one of my clients called expressing much frustration that visitors to her Website were not staying long enough. Business was going well and most of her customers came to her through her Website but still the average time on site was less than 3 minutes per visitor. What was she doing wrong? Why weren’t her visitors staying longer?

Rather than worry about how much time people are spending on your Website, here are two questions you should be answering Continue reading “How Much Time Should Visitors Spend on Your Website?”

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Is Your Website Social Media Friendly?

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If referrals are important to your business or organization, then visitors to your Website should be able to forward your content to friends in just a few clicks instead of taking time to “copy and paste” your Web links before emailing them to friends.

Online communication today is more than “email”. More and more people are choosing to use social networks as their primary communication platform.

Some of the top Websites are finding that a growing number of their new visitors are coming from social networks where their regular visitors are sharing Web links. For example, news out of TWTRCON (the annual “Twitter for Business” conference) is that social media is the fastest growing source of traffic to the Wall Street Journal Online, wsj.com! Up to 15% of visitors to wsj.com get there through links posted on Facebook, twitter, StumbleUpon or other social media Websites. Continue reading “Is Your Website Social Media Friendly?”

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Stop Your Email List from Shrinking

Businesses that depend on email marketing to engage customers will notice two things about their email list every year; 1. Your email list will shrink by at least 15% before the end of the year, 2. Your bounce (email return) rate will be greater than it was the previous year – but does this mean you are losing your subscribers? That depends on your Website.

Customers no longer depend on emails to keep up with the latest news from their favorite marketers – thanks to SPAM (the worst kind), your recipients have grown tired of wading thru emails to decipher which ones they really want to read. Continue reading “Stop Your Email List from Shrinking”

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Coupons 3.0 – Getting it Right

How do you keep customers coming through the door on a major holiday when everyone seem gone fishing or at the beach? Coupons! Mr. Wash is one company that’s getting this almost right. Every holiday weekend their subscribers get an email with coupons for up to 50% off their services. The coupons are “one per customer” and all you need to do is print it and present it for a nearly free car wash. Sounds easy enough? Well, not if you read your emails on a mobile phone.

Old coupons, new challenges. People who must show up in person to get deals from companies like Mr. Wash face two challenges with the ‘print and present’ coupon model Continue reading “Coupons 3.0 – Getting it Right”

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Why Twitter is Good for Small Businesses

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Small business operators and educators are sometimes too busy to keep up with latest greatest social media tools. It’s hard enough to decide which one to take on, much more learn how to use them to boost your business. Well we’ve got a tip for you: start with Twitter! It is one of the best gateway social media tool for small businesses and here are 3 reasons why:

Realtime results: Start off by using Twitter as a search engine. Unlike Google, Twitter’s search results are delivered in “realtime” so you get the latest feedback and information on any request, in every subject area and in just about any language. Twitter limits the number of characters per post, so your results are “straight to the point”. Continue reading “Why Twitter is Good for Small Businesses”

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Lead Conversion: How to Keep Your Fish

A solid marketing plan must include a budget for online marketing regardless of the product or service being offered. If a potential customer calls, it means your marketing campaigns are working; but the best online marketing campaigns can be derailed by lousy offline sales. Here are three rules your sales rep should keep in mind the next time your phone rings:

Demo, not promo. Your potential customer has already seen the promotion on the Website – that is why they are calling so there is little need to re-state it. Move on to the next step of demonstrating how your product or service can meet his/her needs. Scheduling a Web or in person demo Continue reading “Lead Conversion: How to Keep Your Fish”

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Your Website is your “game face” – Is it on?

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The first thing most customers do before they follow a lead to any product or service is to ‘look online’ to learn more about that product or service. Your potential client is likely to take two steps before giving you a call or making a commitment to your product or service – 1. use a search engine to look for your business, 2. visit your Website (if you have one).

When potential customers find your Website online, what should they see? Your Website is the global face of your business. In today’s marketplace, Websites are required to legitimize a business or organization. When potential customers arrive at your Website, they should see what they are looking for – not just what you want them to see. Continue reading “Your Website is your “game face” – Is it on?”

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The Press Release is Dead

Does Your Press Release Have Legs?When was the last time you read a press release? Unless you wrote it, your answer is most likely “never”. Five years ago press releases were necessary for industry analysts, stakeholders and journalists to get wind of what organizations were up to. Today, few writers are grabbing press releases from fax machines or Web sites to craft headline stories for print media.

In case you missed it, good old print media is just that – old and unprofitable. Newspapers are fast going online or trying to build a bridge between the print and online worlds. In the new world of publishing, a faxed press release is a waste of time and a useless way to distribute relevant information. Here are three tips to get your press release to impact your business as Continue reading “The Press Release is Dead”

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When to use a Social Network as Your Website

Test your business idea for cheap. If you are an entrepreneur that’s just starting out, launching your business’ Web presence in a social network could be a great first step before launching a fully developed Website. Social networks are often free to use and the best ones even offer e-commerce tools for cheap. Take a quick peek at the top social networks and you will find entrepreneurs of every stripe using the networks to understand and break into their markets.

Create a buzz, get feedback. Social networks are great places for polling an audience and getting a product or service airtime that it would not otherwise get. MySpace for example has been a true blessing for unsigned bands. They are able to create profiles with pizzazz, upload their music, share it for free and even sell it; with a big enough following of “friends”, they might Continue reading “When to use a Social Network as Your Website”